Holy Surrender?

Remember, that complete surrender alone makes us clear channels for the Supreme.

We need Divine guidance from within. There are two wills, God’s will and self-will. Both are active. The foolish choose self-will, the wise choose God’s will, because they do not feel safe to be separated from God and His guidance. This is wisdom, but this wisdom cannot be imposed. Life has its culmination when we learn to have a true sense of God as the Supreme Doer. When we acquire spiritual surrender, we rise above all of our troubles.

Swami Paramananda                                                                                                                            Book of Daily Prayers and Meditations

There are many places to start and stay here… None more important for me than the dimensions of will that are central in my outlook on what constitutes faith, and what does it truly and earnestly mean to follow God/Spirit/Jesus etc., in one’s life, thought and practice. As a particularly willful person, and as a sincere spiritual aspirant, I had to make a hard decision; to learn and practice an ongoing sense of humility, reverence, and faith that allowed me to release any need for self-assertion or willfulness. 

One of my Shalem mentors, Dr. Gerry May, author of Will and Spirit, was instrumental in helping me to discern the vast difference between “being willful and being willing.” Especially when it comes to the challenging task of discerning the source and truth behind my outlooks and actions. 

He impressed upon me the need for cultivating and keeping an open-minded and open-hearted willingness that is necessary for spiritual depth and further development. Our capacity for free will as a gift, and as part of our gracious definition of our humanness becomes the way we understand how our thoughts and actions operate within us, and asks us about the vital core question of “Whom does it serve?”

 Does my will serve my ego, my immediate needs for self-justification, rationalization, or to somehow preserve my selfishness or my frail self-esteem? Or does my will, harnessed to those espoused spiritual values and disciplined by those ethical virtues within a spirit-centered life, take precedence in my decision-making, and receive my sincere attention?

Surrender, I will readily admit, has never been a path I have easily chosen. I much prefer an outlook such as Thoreau’s not “to practice resignation unless it was quite necessary.” In looking back, I feel that I willingly decided what I consider to be the more noble way of resigning, rather than induce or prolong any serious conflict in a church or in my personal life. 

Overall, I prefer the Islamic ideal of submission to surrender; because, at least for me, submission to what is godly, virtuous, compassionate etc., is a higher conscious moral choice. Surrender, for me, is feeling trapped in a dead end place of helplessness where there was no choice but to give up or give in… 

In the Swami’s language, I would clearly prefer to transcend rather than surrender, and become both a clear channel and a visible witness for the Spirit-led life.

The larger lesson for me in being or becoming a more intentional person centers on what I release; and what I’m willingly letting go of as any ego based personal desire to influence or direct the outcome of my life; letting go of my all too human preferences, to follow the directives I receive in prayer, Scripture, dreams, and other inspired ways of guidance. This choice or willingness remains a lifelong challenge that I have had to learn how to welcome and accept…